Qatar Petroleum investing in USA’s oil & gas fields

10 July 2018

Qatar Petroleum, the world’s biggest seller of liquefied natural gas (LNG), is looking to get even larger, investing USD $20 billion into America’s oil and gas fields when rival U.S. exporters are currently expanding.

The investments will be made over five years, CEO Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said in an interview with Bloomberg News. These investments will likely include the Golden Pass LNG gas export project in Texas, being developed with ExxonMobil Corp.

Al-Kaabi said Qatar will likely be announcing a deal in the U.S. “before the end of the year,” but he declined to say whether it would involve oil or gas. Qatar is also looking to invest an additional $5 billion in downstream assets, such as chemicals projects, he said.

The state-owned company is looking at both shale and conventional resources in the U.S., according to Al-Kaabi. Qatar Petroleum and its partners in the Golden Pass project are now weighing commercial bids from contractors, and expect to decide whether to move forward with the project by the first quarter of 2019, he said. The final go-ahead will come only after the company secures gas to feed the project.